Eli Lilly Just Bought Three Vaccine Companies at Once. Why?

Prevention as a Business Model

So why is the company best known for Mounjaro and Zepbound suddenly obsessed with vaccines?

Daniel Skovronsky, Lilly's Chief Scientific and Product Officer, said the acquisitions "reflect a deliberate strategy to prevent disease at its source rather than treat its consequences." He pointed to decades of evidence linking common infections to later neurological disease, cancer, and infertility.

That framing is key. Lilly isn't positioning these as traditional vaccine plays (inject, prevent acute illness, move on). It's arguing that vaccines are upstream interventions against chronic diseases, the kind of conditions Lilly already treats. An EBV vaccine that reduces MS risk doesn't just prevent a viral infection; it potentially removes patients from the neurology pipeline entirely. A staph vaccine that prevents surgical-site infections saves hospitals billions.

It's a clever strategic narrative. Whether the science delivers on that promise is a different question entirely.

The Peter Marks Connection

This move didn't come out of nowhere. Earlier, Lilly recruited Peter Marks, the former head of the FDA's Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (the division that oversees vaccines), to lead molecule discovery and infectious disease efforts at Lilly Research Laboratories. Marks said he aims to "advance the development of infectious disease products for public health."

Hiring the guy who used to approve vaccines, then buying three vaccine companies? That's not a coincidence. That's a playbook.

Lilly's Diversification Obsession

Zoom out, and this vaccine triple-play fits a broader pattern. Lilly has been on an acquisition tear since 2023, using GLP-1 cash flows to build new franchises far beyond diabetes and obesity.

The receipts: Morphic Holding for $3.2 billion (oral immunology for IBD). Scorpion Therapeutics for up to $2.5 billion (oncology). Verve Therapeutics for up to $1.3 billion (gene editing for cardiovascular disease). Ventyx Biosciences for $1.2 billion (immunology). By one estimate, Lilly has spent roughly $21 billion on M&A during its recent spree.

The logic is straightforward: GLP-1s won't be king forever. Patents expire. Competitors catch up. Lilly is essentially taking its obesity profits and spreading them across oncology, immunology, neuroscience, gene editing, and now infectious disease. It's the pharmaceutical equivalent of not putting all your eggs in one basket, except the basket cost $21 billion.

Can Lilly Actually Pull This Off?

Vaccines are a different beast from small molecules and injectable peptides. The global vaccine market hit about $88.9 billion in 2025 and is projected to reach $211.6 billion by 2034, but it's dominated by entrenched players: GSK, Sanofi, Pfizer, and Merck. These companies have decades of manufacturing expertise, established distribution networks, and deep relationships with public health agencies worldwide.

Lilly has none of that. What it does have is cash, a massive manufacturing buildout across four new U.S. sites, and a direct-to-patient infrastructure through LillyDirect. The question is whether those assets translate to vaccine commercialization, which involves government contracts, cold-chain logistics, and advisory committee politics that look nothing like selling a diabetes drug.

There's also a timeline problem. LimmaTech's lead program is in Phase 1. Vaccine Company's EBV candidate still needs to prove it can actually prevent long-term diseases like MS, a trial that could take years, maybe a decade. Even Curevo, the most advanced asset, still needs a pivotal Phase 3 trial before it can challenge Shingrix. Most of the $3.8 billion headline is milestone-based for a reason: a lot has to go right.

The Bottom Line

Lilly just made one of the largest coordinated vaccine bets by a non-vaccine company in recent memory. The strategic vision is bold and intellectually compelling: use vaccines to stop chronic diseases before they start, then leverage Lilly's scale to deliver them globally.

But vision and execution are two very different things. These are early-stage assets in a market where Lilly has zero track record. The milestone-heavy deal structures suggest Lilly knows it's buying potential, not certainty.

For a company that turned a diabetes drug into the obesity revolution, though, betting against Lilly's ambition hasn't been a winning strategy lately. The vaccine industry just got a very wealthy, very motivated new entrant. Whether the incumbents should be worried or amused is the $3.8 billion question.

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